Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1182
“The God of my mercy shall prevent me.” Psalm 59:10.
A LIFE without trouble would be very uninteresting. Our opportunities for greatness would be narrowed down if trials were gone. I watched a glorious sunset, marveling at the beauty of the evening skies all ablaze and adoring Him who gave them their matchless coloring. On the next evening I resorted to the same spot, hoping to be, again, enraptured with the gorgeous pomp of the ending day, but there were no clouds and, therefore, no glories. True, the canopy of sapphire was there, but no magnificent array of clouds to form golden masses with edges of burning crimson, or islands of loveliest hue set in a sea of emerald. There were no great conflagrations of splendor or flaming peaks of mountains of fire. The sun was as bright as before, but for lack of dark clouds on which to pour out his luster, his magnificence was unrevealed.
A man who should live and die without trials would be like a setting sun without clouds—he would have scant opportunity for the display of those virtues with which the Divine Grace of God had endowed him. In the case of David we have much cause for thankfulness that he did not lead a life of unbroken tranquility. It is well for us that his was not a flowery path of continuous prosperity. Over him the waves and billows dashed full often—both within and without he was assailed daily, so that he became the epitome of all the temptations and the aspirations, the Graces and the weaknesses, the joys and the sorrows of our humanity—and therefore his life was so wondrously instructive. David owed much to the Philistines, to the tracks of the wild goats, to the cave of Dallam and to persecuting Saul!
His tried life and a thousand trying circumstances trained him for a grand life and made him, for us, a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected in all our varying moods and passions. None of us can know what we are till we are tried, nor will the good within us increase to any degree of bitterness unless it is exercised. The arm unused loses muscular force—put it to stern labor and it gathers strength. Soldiers are made by war and mariners by storms. The scholar may think it difficult to be severely examined, but he becomes the wiser by the searching test. Our trials and troubles, while they test and develop us, also, by Divine Grace, strengthen and improve us—and we always have great cause to bless God for them when Grace sanctifies them to our highest good.
Had not David been a man of many afflictions he would never have penned such a verse as our text, a confident utterance of unstaggering faith, full of meaning, rich with consolation—the very cream of assured hope in God. There are three things in the text—the first is David’s looking to his God, for God is the theme of the verse. Secondly, David’s appropriating Divine mercy—“the God of my mercy.” And then, thirdly, David’s confidence in merciful help from God— “The God of my mercy will prevent me.”
I. First, then, let us think for awhile of David’s LOOKING TO HIS GOD. “The God of my mercy,” he says. Note that this Psalm was composed by him upon the occasion of his being shut up in the house of Michal, Saul’s daughter, and surrounded by his adversaries. The messengers of the bloodthirsty king watched the house all night long, to kill him, and when they had not effected their purpose, Saul demanded that he should be brought, on his bed, into his presence, that he might slay him. It was not easy for a man, when his enemies were watching the house, to escape out of their hands. David, however, does not appear to have been at all disturbed, but with perfect confidence in God, he expected that a way of escape would be made for him.
He could not hope that Saul would relent, nor could he expect his friends to come to the rescue. Neither did he rely upon his own cunning for the means of escape, but calmly prayed, “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; defend me from those that rise up against me.” He rested quietly, feeling sure that God had his enemies in derision, and could as readily break the line of watchers as a man can drive off a pack of prowling dogs, to whom, indeed, he compares his foes.
Now, Brothers and Sisters, this looking above, this having our eyes upon the Lord, is a practice which should be habitual with all Believers, and needs to be learned by us all. David looked to God on this occasion because he had, before this, habitually waited upon Him. His faith had realized the existence of God and his soul had felt the power of that realized truth.
This is a thing unknown to the unconverted—and unfelt to any high degree by large numbers of those who profess to know the Lord. That there is a God is a doctrine which we all receive, but that God really exists is not grasped by us as it should be. Other existences are more real to us, whereas God’s being should be the most real of all. We look upon His existence as a mystery, a light and airy thing, proper to be believed, but not a matter of everyday fact which can influence our lives to any great extent. This unreal view of God arises from a secret deep-seated unbelief. We dare not say that God is a fiction, but we act as if He were. The faith which David had, and which I trust we have, in our measure, makes God a fact to the mind and heart—intensely and superlatively real! An eye anointed with faith looks upon men and women as if they were shadows, for they are soon to dissolve and cease to be. But it views the Lord as the only real substantial existence—and all that concerns Him as being alone, sure, and vitally important.